The Apple Machine and How to be an Organized Writer

I just had to work on a Mac and it left me flustered. Sure, I fixed the problem but they are just such alien devices. I want options and parameters and different things I can tweak. Mac's are built to be solid and reliable and to not have all that stuff without installing third party applications. And where's the right mouse button?! Especially if it's running Windows XP via VMWare. And while I'm at it, why spend extra money to buy a Mac so you can run Windows under an emulation program? Why not just buy a PC in the first place?

Now back to writing. I've been asked in the past about how I plot out my stories. Do I use an outline or a storyboard, do I have everything arrange in my head? I've tried many things but what I find works the best is not so different from voodoo or ritual prayer.

Don't worry, I have no intentions of bleeding any chickens or ramming needles into straw dolls. Reciting chants in Latin before sipping wine and eating a cracker aren't in my playbook either. What I mean is letting things go and having a little faith in them. Ideas come and go, and while it may seem really cool at first, I know from experience that the initial coolness factor is no barometer for success.

So I let the idea percolate in the back of my head. It sits there and when my brain has a few spare cycles to think about it, it works away at it. Ideas originate fleshing it out and giving me direction – or they fade away and I know it was not going to work out.

Just last night, for example, I had finished working out and I was cooling down in a tanning both (trust me, it's not as paradoxal as it sounds). While I was in there I was suddenly drop kicked by a bunch of great ideas for a couple of scenes for the next book in my Dark Earth series. Ironic, considering not a one of them has been published yet, but also consider I haven't submitted any of them yet either.

Likewise for the sequel to Wanted (working title, "Ice Princess") I've been stuck for months trying to figure out what happens next. I've got plenty of ideas but I didn't know how I wanted to get from point A to point B. I stumbled across another great idea for the Wanted setting and started working on it. I figured it would be a separate book but I ran out of steam as I considered it. I tossed the idea around with my wife and she chastised me for daring to even consider writing a different book for Wanted while so many people had lingering questions about what happened after the first one.

That made me realize what I had was not a complete book on its own. Rather it was something that I could and should blend in to Ice Princess to fill in the blanks. Now I'm full steam on it and excited. And a few more vocal readers who keep asking about it will finally be sated. That'll happen after I finish off "Voices", the Dark Earth freebie I'm on. Hopefully I can wrap that rough draft up in a week or less though since I'm about 75% of the way finished with it.

This answer, without all the details, often infuriates people who want a recipe or procedure that they can follow on how to get things done. It's taken me years to refine it to the point where I know that I should let my subconscious work on it. I have to say though that since I started doing that I have yet to receive a rejection.